It's kind of silly to argue that easy access to guns prevents crimes enabled by easy access to guns.

You're using logic, that's cheating!

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Myrick is as much of a hero as the law would allow. He was only seconds away from the shootings, yet the law had him far away from his gun. Federal law precludes anyone but a cop from having a weapon in or near a school. The modern spree of school shootings began sometime shortly after this law was enacted. In most places, state and local laws needlessly duplicate the federal law, serving only to accommodate political grandstanding.

Is any mention of him

gbaji wrote:

sprinting up to a quarter mile away from the school to their car where they could legally store their weapons, then sprinting back and engaging and stopping a shooter

So, do you have a link for your quarter mile statement or will you just gloss over that? Because you said there have been cases.

Um... Because the law in question prohibits firearm possession by anyone but on duty law enforcement within a "school zone". A school zone is defined as anywhere within 1000 feet of the property line of the school. So depending on where one is within the school at the time a shooting begins (and where their car is parked), they might need to run "up to a quarter mile" to get to where they have legally stored their firearm.

Now, the federal law does allow a number of exceptions and one is if the weapon is unloaded and locked in a secure container or gun rack on/in a motor vehicle, but this exception is generally for people driving a vehicle in the area (so you don't get charged with a federal crime just happening to drive within 1000 feet of a school that you may not have known about). Most states have laws which mirror that law and are more strict in this regard, typically prohibiting storage of firearms on school property no matter how stored (so no parking your car in the school lot with a gun inside). My statement about needing to run "up to a quarter mile away" was a general statement (and made before the example). I don't know how far that particular car was parked away from the school in the case I mentioned.

But that's still irrelevant. He had to go farther to get his gun than he might otherwise have had to because of the laws in place. It's not about exactly how far he specifically had to go, but the fact that we arbitrarily decide that we can't have guns within reasonable reach of law abiding citizens in the event something like this happens. As I've said repeatedly, anything that's "farther" means it takes longer to get there, which means it takes longer to attempt to intervene in the shooting. Everything else being the same, we're increasing the statistical number of deaths from shootings like this by having these laws in place.

I'm also not sure what point you're trying to make. It would seem like the fact that very few people are able to run a great distance away to get a firearm in time to end a mass shooting would be a great argument for not requiring them to keep their guns so far away. I'm not sure how you think this constitutes any sort of argument in favor of continuing to restrict firearm possession within school zones at the federal/state level. Makes no sense at all.

Gun control would have prevented the assistant principal from getting his gun in the truck, yes, but it likely also would have prevented the 16-year-old gunman from getting a rifle. It's kind of silly to argue that easy access to guns prevents crimes enabled by easy access to guns.

There are no gun control measures even remotely being considered which would have prevented the shooting in question (which was committed with a bolt action hunting rifle btw). And even more dangerous weapons are rarely impacted by such things. Norway has pretty strict gun control laws in place, more strict than even those proposed by the Dems right now, yet a gunman managed to kill 77 people in a mass shooting there.

The idea that gun control will prevent such things is a myth.

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Now, if the assistant principal had stopped organized criminals (say, terrorists) from carrying out organized crime, that would have been a better argument.

If his gun had been more easily/quickly accessible, he might have saved more people than he did.

No kidding. No one is stating that gun control will put a complete halt to such acts of violence. Doesn't it strike you as odd though that we have some of the most liberal gun laws and highest gun violence in the developed world?

Gbaji wrote:

If his gun had been more easily/quickly accessible, he might have saved more people than he did.

"If ifs and buts were candy and nuts we all would have a merry christmas"

You do realize there is also the chance he would have gotten himself killed. Or killed someone else. Or have zero impact on anything at all. Working in the land of hypothetical is fun and all but is practically useless outside of abstract ideas.

And, to be fair, I'll admit that Norway's homicide rate vs that of the US may not be completely linked to the number of firearms. For instance, Norway's robust social safety net probably has a lot to do with them not shooting one another as well.

Conflating two things. Obviously if you have more strict gun controls, you'll have lower "gun violence" or even "deaths by gun". But that's circular. The question is whether actual overall crime/violence/murder rates are lower because of gun control and there's very close to zero evidence that one affects the other. But we were talking about mass shooting events, and how to prevent them. Clearly we can't prevent them via gun control, so why not allow legal changes (like more concealed carry and removing gun free zones around schools) which would mitigate and lower the rate of such shootings?

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To be more exact, in the US, the gun-related homicide rate is 3.7 people per 100k. In Norway it's 0.04 people per 100k.

Sure. So what? When guns are available, people who want to kill someone else will choose to use a gun. If they aren't, they'll use other means. The overall homicide rate in Norway is .6, while it's 4.8 in the US. So in the US, 77% of all homicides are committed via firearm, while in Norway only 6.6% are. But put another way, the ratio of homicides committed with something other than a firearm is much higher in Norway than in the US, right? That strongly suggests that when guns aren't available, people still try to commit crimes (and murders). They just use other tools to do so.

It tells us nothing about what the overall murder rate would be in Norway if they changed their gun control laws to be exactly like in the US. Perhaps then, we'd see .45 gun-related homicides per 100k out of .6 total homicides out of 100k. All you may change is how the murders are committed, not whether they are. There's no strong evidence that simply having guns more available makes people commit more murders than otherwise. The evidence seems to suggests merely an effect on the choice of weapons.

The US has a higher overall murder rate. There are a host of sociological and geographical reasons for that. Assuming it's "because we have more guns" is quite a stretch, but that's more or less the argument you're trying to use. I think it's a flawed one. I think we need to look at how legal changes in the US might change things in the US and not assume that if we changed our laws to be like <insert European nation here>, it'll magically make our overall crime and murder rates go down.

#435gbaji,
Posted:Jan 22 2013 at 8:21 PM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) Yes. And a giant meteor could have fallen from the sky and killed them all. So what? He could have gotten himself killed by intervening as he did. Yet, he didn't, and he got the shooter to surrender without any other deaths. So why assume that he could not have done that if he'd gotten there sooner? Sure, maybe he wouldn't have changed anything. Maybe things would have been worse. But maybe they would have been better. I happen to think the odds of an armed person opposing a mass shooter producing a better outcome than if he wasn't there is more than worth the risk that he might make things worse. And I don't think consigning children in schools to be helpless victims until the police arrive is a great alternative. Why not allow someone the chance to intervene? Why not give those people the best chance possible of successfully intervening?

The people saying we should ban all guns are just as insane as the people saying we need to have everyone armed.

Don't forget the "if the janitor had his piece he would have absolutely and for certain saved lives no matter what reality says but this isn't an absolute statement and not all but certainly some!" argument.

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But we were talking about mass shooting events, and how to prevent them. Clearly we can't prevent them via gun control, so why not allow legal changes (like more concealed carry and removing gun free zones around schools) which would mitigate and lower the rate of such shootings?

That is just as appropriate a response to the recent round of mass shootings as banning all guns is.

Making it harder for crazy folks to kill as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time isn't an assault on anyone's 2nd amendment rights, its common sense. Tougher gun regulations should definitely be a part of this discussion. Denying it should be, by providing far right opinion pieces as evidence, will be about as effective in this instance as when you do it with climate change.

It's also outright lies, but that never stopped you before so...

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And, to be fair, I'll admit that Norway's homicide rate vs that of the US may not be completely linked to the number of firearms. For instance, Norway's robust social safety net probably has a lot to do with them not shooting one another as well.

Their penal system probably has something to do with it too. It's the polar opposite of the US in pretty much every way, perhaps even gone too far as it's so friendly that some eastern European people actually want to go to jail because they'll make more money than they do in their home country while also getting free food and a roof over their head so as soon as they're released they'll commit some petty crime to go back to jail. But even with those people, I think Norway still has (one of) the lowest recidivism rate(s) in the world.

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Theophany wrote:YOU'RE AN ELITIST @#%^ AETHIEN, NO WONDER YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND PEOPLE HATE YOU. someproteinguy wrote:Aethien you take more terrible pictures than a Japanese tourist. Astarin wrote:One day, Maz, you'll learn not to click on anything Aeth links.

Of course another country not located in central Africa is the United States and our homicide by firearms rate falls right between that of Costa Rica and Zimbabwe. With stats like those, I guess if you moved us to central Africa it'd be like Thunderdome.

Of course another country not located in central Africa is the United States and our homicide by firearms rate falls right between that of Costa Rica and Zimbabwe. With stats like those, I guess if you moved us to central Africa it'd be like Thunderdome.

No, then we could export some of our gun violence to neighboring countries.

Conflating two things. Obviously if you have more strict gun controls, you'll have lower "gun violence" or even "deaths by gun". But that's circular. The question is whether actual overall crime/violence/murder rates are lower because of gun control and there's very close to zero evidence that one affects the other. But we were talking about mass shooting events, and how to prevent them. Clearly we can't prevent them via gun control, so why not allow legal changes (like more concealed carry and removing gun free zones around schools) which would mitigate and lower the rate of such shootings?

These two are so mixed up right now. Gun-related homicides in general don't seem very related to the mass shootings that pop up on occasion, other than both using a gun of course. On one hand you have people who have a relatively clean slate, peppered with a touch of concern about their mental health going ******** on a school. The other extreme you have a career criminal spiraling down a violent path of crime/drugs/gangs/etc culminating with a shooting, maybe several times.

I'm not sure how you can really stop a person determined to go out in a 'blaze of glory' though. Any practical defense a school district can afford can be fairly easily overcome by a reasonably determined attacker. I'm not sure spending millions of dollars on armed guards, gun safety training, or whatever is really the best use of money for a school district struggling to educate their kids.

I dunno, our high school security officer dealt drugs to the kids for years before he was caught. I would have hated to have given him a gun on campus. On the other hand despite the school being a gun-free zone guns were commonly brought to school anyway. Especially during hunting season there were always guns in cars in the parking lot. I never heard of any trouble coming from that, however there was the kid who pulled a knife on one of the other students in front of me in the hallway. On one hand it was crime without a gun, on the other that was unsettling enough without imagining him with a firearm.

I guess in the end when I hear gun-free zone I think "cheapest and least controversial way to address a problem" more than a best solution. I'm not sure if there's really a more practical way to address things. Massive school shootings and other mass-murder events are thankfully rare, and I'm not sure one can really afford to spend so much money on such an isolated problem. Again though, I'm going on the assumption anyone bringing a firearm onto school grounds would have to be trained somehow and that they wouldn't allow just anyone to bring a weapon there. Liability reasons if nothing else. Crazy guy kills people and it's a tragedy, your guy kills people and it's a lawsuit.

On one hand you have people who have a relatively clean slate, peppered with a touch of concern about their mental health going ape-sh*t on a school. [...] The other extreme you have a career criminal... ...I would have hated to have given him a gun on campus. On the other hand despite the school being a gun-free zone guns were commonly brought to school anyway. [...] On one hand it was crime without a gun, on the other that was unsettling enough without imagining him with a firearm.